Industrial Psychology

Summary of Social System Components Organizations have physical structures , but these alone do not define organizations. The social fabric-norms,roles and cultures- is a significant influence on the conduct of organization members. Organization differ in their norms, roles and culture. Norms influence behavior by increasing its consistency and predictability. Roles prescribed the boundaries of acceptable behavior and enhance conformity. These contracts help produce uniformity and consistency in individual behavior, which is necessary in part to ensure that all organizational members are pursuing common goals.

Organizations differ in culture just as individuals differ in personality. Similarly, just as certain personality types are better suited for some jobs, certain cultures foster certain behaviors. These constructs define an organizations social

Global Organizations Global organizations have all the properties of any organization(in terms of structural and social components) with the added feature that their physical locations and employees are distributed throughout the world.

Global organizations are relatively new, emerging in the 1990’s as a response to advances in computer technology, new trade agreements among nations,

Marquardt believes these differences in values can be reduced to four key dimensions that most affect the global organization:

Individuals identify on a personal level with the social network to which they belong. 3.Communcations

The American Psychological Association(2003) recognizes that organizations are now being designed that include wide cultural variability.

Cross-Cultural I/O Psychology: Four dimensions on which culture can differ 1. Power Distance refers to the extent to which less powerful members of an organization expect and accept power that power is distributed unequally. 2. Individualism – Collectivism Individualism- refers to the belief that people in a society primarily look after themselves and their family members.

Collectivism- is the belief that people in a society are integrated into a strong, cohesive in-groups, which throughout their lifetime protect them in exchange for unquestioning loyalty .

4. Uncertainty Avoidance the extent to which members of a culture fell threatened by uncertain or unknown situations.

Organizational Change Organizations are created to fulfill some purpose or objective. They exist in larger environment that encompasses economic, legal, and social factor. Organization Development I/O Psychology has an area of specialization devoted to the study of facilitating organizations to develop or change themselves in response to environmental influences. It is called organization development(OD).

From the end of World war II(the mid- 1940’s) through the 1970s, OD was instrumental in helping those organizations that were, in effect, suffering from some “growing pains” in their own development.

What is different now from 30 years ago is: 1. the greater strength of environmental pressures prompting change

Reorganizing and Downsizing Reorganization a process by which an organization reconfigures its structure and processes to achieve greater efficiency Downsizing the process by which an organization reduces its number of employees to achieve greater overall efficiency. -The term given to this process of cutting jobs includes downsizing, reduction-in-force, and right sizing. The term right sizing implies that there is a size for organization that is “right” or correct for its environment.

Where do the eliminated jobs came from within an organization? • The greatest losses typically coming from the middle line, technostructure, and support staff. • Jobs can also be lost in the operating core as jobs are automated or reassigned to other countries that pay lower wages. The strategic apex may be reduced, but generally the fewest jobs are lost at this level. • Organization hiring its own employees to work in this jobs, organizations may contract the services of this people through other organizations, such as company that offers security guards or food prepares to other organization. These jobs have said to be outsourced.

Outsourcing the services of this individuals is less costly to the organization than hiring its own employees to perform this services.

How can Organization Survive without Middle Line? By eliminating much of the middle line, the coordinating mechanism shifts from direct supervision to standardization. The coordination was formerly achieved through personal contact with a supervisor is now achieved through a greater standardization of the work processes, output or employee skills.

Top Part of an Organizational Chart Before Downsizing President

Regional Vice President

Regional Vice President

Vice President

Sales Manager Production Manager

Vice President

Production Manager

Sales Manager

Vice President

Production Manager

Sales Manager

Vice President

Production Manager Sales Manager

Top Chart Of an Organizational Chart After Downsizing President

Vice President

Sales Manager

Producti on Manager

Producti on Manager

Producti on Manager

Producti on Manager

What consequences might we expect from this reorganization? • There would be less administrative control from the loss of managerial jobs. • There would be greater pressure on the organization’s parts to coordinate with each other because of the loss of direct supervision. • There would be probably be more stress placed on the surviving employees to work harder and find new ways to do the work of the employees whose jobs where eliminated. • The organization would have fewer salary expenditures associated with the elimination of eight jobs

Empowerment • The process of giving employees in an organization more power and decision-making authority within a context of less managerial oversight. • The meaning of empowerment comes from “power”.

Four General Empowerment 1. Meaning Individuals feels of sense of meaning when an activity counts in his or her own value system. Empowered individuals derive personal significance from their work. They get energized about a given activity and thus become connected through a sense of meaning.

2. Competence Empowered individuals have a sense of self-effectiveness or personal competence. They believe that they have only the needed skills abilities but also the confident that they

Six Sigma • Comprehensive approach to organizational change that is based on the behavioral concepts and the used of statistical information to aid in decision making. • Derived from the statistical power of the normal distribution. • Sigma is the term associated with the standard deviation, the statistical index that reveals the spread or the variability of scores in a distribution. • To understand how much variability exists in the quality of the products or services a company offers and to reduce the variability that results in customer dissatisfaction. • Method of improving business processes using statistical information to achieve greater customer satisfaction.

Five Critical Phases of Process Improvement 1. Define first step is to define the organization’s customers, their requirements and the key organizational processes that affect them. 2. Measure Many variables can be measured but the most critical to the customer are the ones that should be measured. 3. Analyze to determine why the processes is not performing as desired. 4. Improve organization should determine the potential solutions to improve upon the processes that are causing customer

5. Control last phase is to develop, document, and implement a strategy to ensure that performance improvement remains at the desire level.

Overcoming Organizational resistance to Change Change introduces ambiguity into the environment, with the concomitant effects of less predictabilty control. Hedge and Pulakos(2002) noted that the reasons people resist change in organization and varied. Muchinsky(2004) found that in the order of organizational interventions to be successful, the strategies to affect the change have to be as rich and diverse as those design to resist change.

Galagher,Joseph and Park(2002) described how resourceful people can become when they don’t want to do something. Reasons for resistance to Organizational

Change vested interest Change affects the status quo and employees worry that positions maybe eliminated or they maybe terminated or resigned Fear of uncertainty establish a routine; they become familiar with the expectations and responsibilities of the job. Misunderstandings are specially likely between higher management and those on whom change is imposed.

Social disruption comfortable patterns of communication and information flow are established after working with other employees over time.

Rejection of outsiders when change is introduce by an external change agent, there maybe resistance merely because the individual is considered an outsider who cannot possibly know what is best for the organization

3 types of Organizational Change Self initiated vs. imposed change with self initiated change the individual undertakes the change as a result of his or her own initiative and volition. Imposed change is initiated by others to which individuals is forced to react.

Effect of Psychological Ownership or disposition toward change as influence by type of change Self initiated(+) Vs. Imposed Change(-)

Evolutionary(+) Vs. Revolutionary Change(-)

self

Individuals disposition toward change of organizati on

Psychological ownership of the organization

organization

Additive (+) Vs. Subtractive change(-)

Evolutionary vs. revolutionary change evolutionary change involves incremental modifications to the organization, and as consequence, it does not suddenly alter the individuals understanding of, or relationship to, organization. revolutionary change challenges the individuals understanding of the organization because the change alters the organization’s existing structure. Additive vs. Subtractive Change changes may add things to the organization or take them away